In the Moonlight
by Neodymium60
Summary: "She raised her head, her face all basked in the moonlight, and for a moment, she remembered that she was living among the stars." / From the tale of an adolescent's path towards self-discovery.


This fictional story comes purely from the imagination of the author. Any similarity with other people, places or events is purely a coincidence. No copyright infringement intended.

* * *

"Tell the angel who will watch over your future destiny, Morrel, to pray sometimes for a man, who like Satan thought himself for an instant equal to God, but who now acknowledges with Christian humility that God alone possesses supreme power and infinite wisdom."

– _The Count of Monte Cristo_ (1844-1846), Chapter CXVII, Alexandre Dumas

 **φ**

This story is a story of redemption, miracle, faith. It is a narrative that describes the courage to choose life, truth, happiness and peace. It is an audacious tale about the shock between faith and reason, science and religion, these themes that govern human life and the universe.

This is a story of death, the infinite agony of losing a loved one, and the difficult path of reconstruction that follows it – for those who leave this world to enter the realms of the other universe, that of peace and rest, they never leave us, really. They remain with us, through our joys and sorrows, and through those memories of ours that immortalize them forever in successive images crystallized in time and space.

This is a story of love, this passion of the heart that reveals itself in the most unexpected and unpredictable places and moments, but which in retrospect was always there, waiting for us.

But more importantly, this is the story of those whose heart has wavered, wandered alone in those gloomy lands far from the infinite light of God, but for which Providence - or call it fate or destiny - has directed towards the right path, that of truth, and this is what, in the humble opinion of the author, defines the essence of the eternal struggle of life. For are all these pagans, these disbelievers, not also men, human beings who struggle to find their own way, in their own way?

Through the eyes of a baffled adolescence, discover again what means to love God, to believe in Him and to accept the simple truth which is salvation to all of us.

 **φ**

In the dead of the night, a girl was writing.

While all the houses in the small town of Berkeley Spring were sleeping, only one window cast a light upon the silent streets. _The sun rises and the sun sets,_ she thought _, but when the sun will rise again tomorrow, it will not be just another day. It will be another beginning_.

But this was only a small thought in the back of her head, for she was writing furiously in a small, rectangular object. It was her journal, and if a bystander would lean over her shoulder to read her thoughts, this is what he would find:

 _Dear Diary,_

 _What is happening to your poor Cathy?_ _Am I going crazy?_

 _These days, I cannot help but think of death nearly every day._ _Not of my own fatal and inevitable death, no, but of death in general that lurks all human beings._ _What happens when our eyes close, our bodies become cold? This is the death I am thinking of._

 _It is said that men possess a soul, but I have always thought that it was absurd._ _No._ _How to believe the existence of a kind of spirit occupying a host, while guiding each movement of this body envelope of ours?_ _How to believe that part of our body is immortal, living even after death?_

 _I persist in believing that the secret of existence simple: that we are our brains._ _We are the myriad of links between our neurons._ _When the body dies, man too._

 _One must believe in miracles, too, of course. I have to believe in miracles._

 _We are small creatures indeed who are capable of conceiving our own existence._ _To act thoughtfully, and responsibly – at least, sometimes and to some extent, should I say._ _Oh yes!_ _I forgot, that is what is called consciousness, but again, does consciousness exist?_

 _Is consciousness not the friend, but also the mortal enemy of science?_ _'_ _La science et la conscience,' as they would say it in French._ _Is there really a way to measure consciousness?_ _For in my opinion, everything that exists must be measurable, but how are we to measure consciousness?_ _Is it only a state of identification of our own self?_ _Are there several degrees of consciousness?_ _Is a worm conscious?_ _And a computer?_

 _And could I one day answer these questions, which, contrary to the idea of many, are not as much metaphysical as they are concrete?_ _Consciousness has allowed my development into a human being, but I have only managed to obscure its definition…_

* * *

Cathy paused. She read what she just wrote, but couldn't believe it. It was as if an odd force possessed her forearm and hand, and forced her to write those thoughts that weren't hers. But there was no force, only some odd thoughts and a pen to write them down.

She never really believed in God, although her parents were religious and she had her communion and all. The world made sense without religion, without God, so she had always dismissed divine explanation for what made more sense, rationally. Yet, she had never possessed those intensely passionate feelings about reason, neither. Somehow, she felt the fever to write, and continued.

* * *

 _What about morality, then?_ _Is it only a product of the reactions of the human's small mirror neurons?_ _What does seeing someone, connecting with someone, feeling an empathy for him that would break our hearts?_

 _Some say that we perceive the joy and sorrow of others, then act accordingly._ _Befriend someone to palpate, and share a piece of the infinite joy that fills them. Help someone to stop our own pain, suffering, and pity for the poorest. Is it really like this? I hope not._ _Do not tell me, oh dear diary, that I have to answer all these questions because I do not know how to._

 _Who has the right to establish the rules of morality?_ _Should we save a person or save five from a train, like what the teacher taught us?_ _Oh, dear diary, do not tell me that I have to answer all these questions, as well. Do not tell me that I'm going crazy._

 _But I have one last question:_ _what about love?_ _Yes, they have already answered this questions many times._ _But love cannot defy all laws, can it?_ _Again, it must be the neurons._ _Hormones._ _Some chemical reactions._ _Two subjects, obviously, and we have the perfect equation of love._

 _Sigh. I'm really going crazy, because I just thought that the delirium that is eating my soul, at its paroxysm, can transform me into some kind of genius._ _In reality, it is not only a thin barrier that separates these two worlds? But only the crazy people think of themselves as geniuses, no? And me, just thinking_ that _, does actually prove my weird state of mind at this moment._

 _But let's come back to love, oh please! Why are men, women, boys and girls like me so obsessed with this equation of love?_ _I would never know how to explain it without going mad myself._ _It is so difficult sometimes to differentiate the irrational from the rational – and the rational and from me._

 _I know, for example, that there must be an alteration of the mind of men so long as we cannot base ourselves on our reason and our arbitration solely on the basis of what we perceive and not on what we guess;_ _so long as we cannot marry the geometry of reason with the indescribable of our intuition;_ _or in other words, so long as our brain cannot function in complete assonance with the murmurs of our heart, in short, so long as we cannot live in harmony with our own chimeras, and consequently while evolving towards our own rout , men will only grasp a tiny reflection of the fundamental message that the Universe has been trying to transmit to us since the dawn of time._

 _My hands shake as I write this. I'm really going mad._

 _What do you think?_

 _Your devoted Cathy._

 **φ**


End file.
